Sunday, February 28, 2010

Read 'em and Weep - advance in frescoland


I am moving in a direction that I can no longer call forward. I am losing reference to borders and permanence. The last transition towards elusive photo fresco portratiure was the result of having enough frames to cast the images into, which therefore restricted my experimentation. The black and white blurred images in plaster that I have been trying to make have been rectangular as a result of the wooden frames. Essentially this is a formal shape and since I feel more of the essence of the characters that I am entombing it has restricted my thinking about the final graphic, as well as, forced me to keep making frames before I could make my photo-frescos. Now, as I have developed my pouring technique I have realized that I don't need a frame to work in, I only need a flat surface upon which to work. Above you will see the first work done without the use of a frame.



A piece of misinformation I have absorbed from pop icon Albert Einstein is that while traveling the train to Princeton Einstein proposed that he could see in 4 dimensions. Although this may be fiction I have always wondered if this is indeed possible. Now I am playing with fire in that I think I can see the innards of the people whose photographs I print into these photofresco prints. The fact that I am moving away from shape and permanence only makes me feel closer to the idea that I am seeing something more than the two dimesions that make up the visual image. I am pulling from the past the persona of the individuals themselves. This is a spiritual dimension that exist in photographs, but is not conveyed through literal photographic printing techniques. Here is an image of Einstein himself.




Now that I have a clue what I am doing I am challenging my own aestetic in that my rejects may be more on target than what I keep trying to accomplish with these prints. If these images are going to be spiritual, then by definition they do not have to adhere to my constraints on what is visually appealing. My sense of composition and style is irrelevant to the final product and I need to separate my own desire to have a symbolic and good looking image from simply a read on the photographs that I am working with. Much like reading cards, I should not project what I want to see. With this in mind I have a sad looking image of Warhol and a dark image of Bruce Lee.

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